Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Poem for Tuesday

Worked Late on a Tuesday Night
By Deborah Garrison


Again.
Midtown is blasted out and silent,
drained of the crowd and its doggy day
I trample the scraps of deli lunches
some ate outdoors as they stared dumbly
or hooted at us career girls-the haggard
beauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap
in the March wind as we crossed to and fro
in front of the Public Library.

Never thought you'd be one of them,
did you, little lady?
Little Miss Phi Beta Kappa,
with your closetful of pleated
skirts, twenty-nine till death do us
part! Don't you see?
The good schoolgirl turns thirty,
forty, singing the song of time management
all day long, lugging the briefcase
home. So at 10:00 PM
you're standing here
with your hand in the air,

cold but too stubborn to reach
into your pocket for a glove, cursing
the freezing rain as though it were
your difficulty. It's pathetic,
and nobody's fault but
your own. Now

the tears,
down into the collar.
Cabs, cabs, but none for hire.
I haven't had dinner; I'm not half
of what I meant to be.
Among other things, the mother
of three. Too tired, tonight,
to seduce the father.

--------

I spent the morning playing with my web pages at littlereview.com trying to teach myself more CSS than I already know...does anyone have recommendations for really good web sites or a CSS For Dummies type book? I still have lots and lots of work to do...in particular, I need to come up with an index page for my photos where I have some kind of menu in a sidebar and can make photos come up in the main content area. And then I need to figure out how to do the same for my 1000+ reviews and stuff...I deliberately kept the html on those pages very simple in case one day I figured out how to design tables or framesets for something similar, but I've never found a way to use tables or framesets that worked consistently on most browsers the way CSS seems to. I might even get out our ancient Mac to see how things look on that monitor.

Right after school I had to pick up both kids, drop some stuff off at the library that was due today and then take them to the opthalmologist. As usual the doctor was running more than a half hour late, and as usual it took twenty minutes for the drops to dilate their eyes, so we were there well into the evening, with them bored and running their mouths endlessly. Opthalmologist had Happy Feet on in the office and when we came home I had put on a clip of an old friend's sister, a professional singer, performing "Think of Me" which led to Phantom of the Opera on the TV before Heroes. There was no point in trying to watch the news; there could have been a nuclear war in Asia and a Redskin getting shot would still have had ten minutes of air time first. I wanted to know what was going on with the Mideast peace talks, but it was all Sean Taylor. And I can't read news and do dishes at the same time.













Watched both Heroes and Journeyman half-attentively while conversing with kids and distracting cats. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that immortality on Heroes works the same as on Highlander and you can kill by taking someone's head even if, like Sylar, you don't intend to eat them (could anyone gain the powers of others the way Sylar does or is that his unique way of absorbing powers, as opposed to Peter's?). I must agree with Tim Kring, the business about the virus should have been introduced in the second episode of the season rather than waiting till now to make sense of things, when I'm almost beyond caring. (And much as I love Hiro, it should be someone else's turn to kill the bad guy and save the world...like, oh, they could give a girl something awesome to do.) Of course Journeyman could do that too, instead of putting wifey in the apron and letting her play damsel in distress while Livia goes begging Jack to save Dan. The episode was, at least, totally gripping. And had a happy ending!

When the NBC lineup finished, we watched the end of the silliest Monday Night Football game ever, 3-0 with the only score in the final minute of the game. The punts just landed and stuck on the soaking wet field. Of course, the last there was a 3-0 loss, the loser was...the Redskins!

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